I am forced to use the ANSEL character set for some GEDCOM documents but must convert them to a more modern set for another app which doesn't recognize ANSEL. I am unable to locate an ISO code for ANSEL in a search of the web. Would someone plese identify the ANSEL character set from the list given by
iconv -l
thanks 
It's ISO 5426 (probably -2). But iconv has to know how to deal with it - mine does not it appears.
This file: /usr/lib/nls/iconv/config.iconv
lists the character sets for your iconv, and shows aliases for many of them.
(it may be parked in another directory tree on your system, find will get it)
This is not much help, but it's all I know.
no nls directory or config.iconv file found on my Mac. Executing "iconv -l" lists the available aliases but there is no 5426 among them. Disturbing. Thanks for the help.
Am curious about this,
is there any way of identifying the character set ?
for ex:
to determine the character set file <A> contains.
file <A> contains character set of UTF-7
SJIS something like that.
Or do we have write our own custom code for parsing? 
ISO 5426-2 is a specification for biliographic (library) work that has Latin ANSI characters and Latin ANSI characters to which a diacritical mark is added - the extra characters use bit 8. It takes special hardware (normally) to process it.
This is OLD - the original specifcation for this was back in 1980.
We had a GIS system that could read input in ISO 5426, so that's the only reason I know about it. And because it was more of a hardware thing iconv and yaz_inconv, etc., don't support conversion.
What the OP will have to do is to create a table in C that maps the diacritical-lized characters to the normal 7-bit character. Then read thru the original file converting each character that is above 127. This is an example for converting ascii-ebcdic, since I don't know the tabling for ANSEL:
/* conversion tables */
#include <sys/types.h>
static unsigned char
ASCII_translate_EBCDIC [ 256 ] =
{
0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08,
0x09, 0x0A, 0x0B, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x0E, 0x0F,
0x10, 0x11, 0x12, 0x13, 0x14, 0x15, 0x16, 0x17, 0x18,
0x19, 0x1A, 0x1B, 0x1C, 0x1D, 0x1E, 0x1F,
0x40, 0x5A, 0x7F, 0x7B, 0x5B, 0x6C, 0x50, 0x7D, 0x4D,
0x5D, 0x5C, 0x4E, 0x6B, 0x60, 0x4B, 0x61,
0xF0, 0xF1, 0xF2, 0xF3, 0xF4, 0xF5, 0xF6, 0xF7, 0xF8,
0xF9, 0x7A, 0x5E, 0x4C, 0x7E, 0x6E, 0x6F,
0x7C, 0xC1, 0xC2, 0xC3, 0xC4, 0xC5, 0xC6, 0xC7, 0xC8,
0xC9, 0xD1, 0xD2, 0xD3, 0xD4, 0xD5, 0xD6,
0xD7, 0xD8, 0xD9, 0xE2, 0xE3, 0xE4, 0xE5, 0xE6, 0xE7,
0xE8, 0xE9, 0xAD, 0xE0, 0xBD, 0x5F, 0x6D,
0x7D, 0x81, 0x82, 0x83, 0x84, 0x85, 0x86, 0x87, 0x88,
0x89, 0x91, 0x92, 0x93, 0x94, 0x95, 0x96,
0x97, 0x98, 0x99, 0xA2, 0xA3, 0xA4, 0xA5, 0xA6, 0xA7,
0xA8, 0xA9, 0xC0, 0x6A, 0xD0, 0xA1, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B,
0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B, 0x4B
} ;
static unsigned char
EBCDIC_translate_ASCII [ 256 ] =
{
0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08,
0x09, 0x0A, 0x0B, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x0E, 0x0F,
0x10, 0x11, 0x12, 0x13, 0x14, 0x15, 0x16, 0x17, 0x18,
0x19, 0x1A, 0x1B, 0x1C, 0x1D, 0x1E, 0x1F,
0x20, 0x21, 0x22, 0x23, 0x24, 0x25, 0x26, 0x27, 0x28,
0x29, 0x2A, 0x2B, 0x2C, 0x2D, 0x2E, 0x2F,
0x2E, 0x2E, 0x32, 0x33, 0x34, 0x35, 0x36, 0x37, 0x38,
0x39, 0x3A, 0x3B, 0x3C, 0x3D, 0x2E, 0x3F,
0x20, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x3C, 0x28, 0x2B, 0x7C,
0x26, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x2E, 0x21, 0x24, 0x2A, 0x29, 0x3B, 0x5E,
0x2D, 0x2F, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x2E, 0x7C, 0x2C, 0x25, 0x5F, 0x3E, 0x3F,
0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x2E, 0x3A, 0x23, 0x40, 0x27, 0x3D, 0x22,
0x2E, 0x61, 0x62, 0x63, 0x64, 0x65, 0x66, 0x67, 0x68,
0x69, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x2E, 0x6A, 0x6B, 0x6C, 0x6D, 0x6E, 0x6F, 0x70, 0x71,
0x72, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x2E, 0x7E, 0x73, 0x74, 0x75, 0x76, 0x77, 0x78, 0x79,
0x7A, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x5B, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x5D, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x7B, 0x41, 0x42, 0x43, 0x44, 0x45, 0x46, 0x47, 0x48,
0x49, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x7D, 0x4A, 0x4B, 0x4C, 0x4D, 0x4E, 0x4F, 0x50, 0x51,
0x52, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x5C, 0x2E, 0x53, 0x54, 0x55, 0x56, 0x57, 0x58, 0x59,
0x5A, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E,
0x30, 0x31, 0x32, 0x33, 0x34, 0x35, 0x36, 0x37, 0x38,
0x39, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E, 0x2E
} ;
/* from EBC TO ASC using nul term string */
unsigned char *to_ASCII(unsigned char *s)
{
register unsigned char *buf=s;
for(; *buf; buf++) *buf=EBCDIC_translate_ASCII[*buf];
return s;
}
/* ASC TO EBC using nul term string */
unsigned char *to_EBCDIC(unsigned char *s)
{
register unsigned char *buf=s;
for(; *buf; buf++) *buf=ASCII_translate_EBCDIC[*buf];
return s;
}
/* length defined coversion EBC TO ASC */
void EBCDIC_to_ASCII(const size_t len, unsigned char *s)
{
register unsigned char *buf=s;
register int j=0;
for(j=len; j; j--) *buf++=EBCDIC_translate_ASCII[*buf];
return;
}
/* length defined coversion ASC TO EBC */
void ASCII_to_EBCDIC(const size_t len, unsigned char *s)
{
register unsigned char *buf=s;
register int j=0;
for (j=len; j; j--) *buf++=ASCII_translate_EBCDIC[*buf];
return;
}